12/20/2011

I first encountered the bulgy-eyed protagonists of Karel Capek’s monumentally great — poignant! and hilarious! — 1937 novel War With the Newts when I was in my early 20s, living in L.A. and working as a peon copy editor at Hustler Magazine. Andrias Scheuchzeri, a species of newt first discovered (according to the book) by…